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Apr 25, 2005 18:14


Nothing about first lunch has ever appealed to me. I mean, it’s at 10:30 in the morning; you have to go sit in class after you finally loosen up a little, and at least for now, nobody who knows me enough to care is in it. Life here at the Academy is great, I thought to myself. Reaching into my pocket, I slipped my thumb through a hole. At least someone else is enjoying my misfortune.
        There it was, down the little hill, the one table looking out over the formerly overgrown hill, now reduced to a filthy brown mudslide. It’s a good place to center oneself on a bad day. I think drizzling, overcast skies count enough as a bad day. With weather like this, nobody will bother me, either, I thought. I hopped up unto the table and sat down to think.
        It was an old familiar sight, so disgustingly rural that it almost made me sick. There was the one farm, and the lake, and the open field. There was a conspicuous line of trees that I usually condemned for being so out of place. As soon as I did that, however, a wave of guilt seeped through my body. They’re only trees, they can’t really do anything about where they grow. They just grow and they don’t take anything from anyone. It was almost like they glared at you, saying “What, take a branch, it’ll grow back, and heck, I’ll make it bigger next time. I’m a tree and I’m going to keep being a tree no matter what the other trees do.”
        Wintergreen trees are the best at what they do. The other trees lose their leaves and go into hibernation, but the wintergreens happily hold the snow. They even play a few jokes and dump it on your head when you don’t pay attention. Sometimes, I wish I could be like an evergreen and not pay attention to the other people at this school. They wilt and lose their leaves, but not me; I’ll keep my needles until you pry them from my cold dead branches. Maybe I’d like to dump some snow on their heads once or twice. That’s what you get when you’re so full of yourself that you don’t pay attention.
        There was a soft clack from under the table. I racked through my mind to see if I could figure out what it was. It was a rock that hit the table. I thought it was someone else having a bad day, and they were perfectly entitled to kick rocks. Let them do what they pine for. I thought about evergreen trees a little more.
        There’s never just one evergreen. They don’t just seed themselves in the middle of a field and grow to be some great shade tree. They always grow in packs, like family, whether it be conspicuous lines of pines or the Christmas tree farms, they are never alone. It might not be so bad, having someone around with you the entire time, but eventually you’d get irritated with whomever it was, no?
Maybe evergreens are the ultimate in tolerance. Humans came in and hacked them down in large numbers, but the evergreens probably thought themselves dying for a good cause and let themselves go. Maybe they don’t know what they’re doing. I remember in Biology I learned that evergreen trees are the first stages of a forest. Maybe they’re so young, in geologic time, that they don’t know hate and irritation. Just like little kids, they’re happy to be with anyone, because someone else is another mind to make-believe with, someone else means that you’ll never have to make an imaginary friend. I really wished I were an evergreen. So young, so oblivious to what’s going on, yet feeling happy as can be, because nothing ever gets you down. There’s very little you can understand except for raw feeling. Life is so much better that way.
Something else hit the table, then another something. Of all days, why was it today that they needed to throw rocks at me? There’s nothing I’m doing wrong, just sitting on a table, pondering ponderosas, nothing special. I have just as much right to sit here as you do to sit there, and I have a right to not have to go home with all sorts of bruises on my back.
It’s almost like I’m my own psychic. As soon as I thought that, another rock hit me in the back, hard. I winced, but other than that tried not to show any signs of emotion. It’s not like the “campus supervisors,” as they’re so called, could do anything about it anyway. With my luck, there won’t be any bruise, there won’t be any witnesses, no evidence, no crime. Nothing was done wrong, just a bunch of kids sitting outside on a cloudy day. Another rock landed next to me, making it clear that I wasn’t going to get back to thinking any time soon.
“Is there a problem?” I asked. My lisp probably didn’t help, but if I had taken the courage to walk up the hill, I might as well stand up for myself.
“What do you want, faggot?” a sharp voice replied. It was almost as if I could hear how he deepened his voice to stand up to the reputation of his Carhartt work clothes. I bet he never worked a day in his life.
“Oh, I get it. It’s time for a little manly-competition, so naturally you pick the weakest thing you can find. I weigh 130 pounds, can’t even bench the bar, and I’m at least two years younger than you.” I’m pretty sure my surliness was going to get me hit, but there are some risks I’m willing to take.
“What’s that supposed to mean, you little fag?”
I take a private joy that “faggot” is the only insult teens these days have. I’m so sick of it that I almost miss the “Your momma’s so…” jokes.
“Go on, prove it to your friends that you’re such a tough guy. Hit me. Make me cry. As long as you can go home at the end of the day proud of what you did. I don’t really care.” I think by now a crowd was forming, but I was too busy with my new friend to really pay attention. “Your friends are waiting, are you going to let them down?”
He just kind of looked at me, trying to find a new way to put “faggot” in his answer. “Listen, faggot, if you’re going to cry, do it now.”
His friends laughed, a little too loud, nervously. Nobody in the pack stood up to back him up, but they all sat and watched, maybe for once thinking about what they’ve spent high school doing instead of just blindly following the leader. Not that there is anywhere to go when you’ve marched into a wall.
“I’m not going to cry. I’m waiting for you to pick on the poor defenseless little 14-year-old so you can tell all your buddies about how you beat some kid up today.”
“Check it out, guys! This little faggot wants me to hit him!”
“I’m still waiting.”
I could smell his deodorant starting to kick in. Nothing ever really happens at this school in the way of fights, so he’d be putting himself against a lot of the student body. I took a quick glance around, seeing about fifteen other teens watching. I looked for a familiar face in the crowd, but there wasn’t one. I looked back at Carhartt, and he flinched towards me. I stood silently and blinked it off. When I opened my eyes, his fist was wound up and ready to strike.
The ever-resilient pine grows in packs. Four unfamiliar, yet imposing faces stepped out from the circle, all of them cracking their knuckles.
“Go ahead, hit the ‘faggot’,” one started, “and we’ll leave you in the can at the bottom of this hill.”
With that show of confidence, three more guys stepped out of the audience, nodding in agreement. Carhartt stepped back, hitting his leg on a table. His friends sat, silent, almost awestruck.
“So, go on. Hit me.”
The entire pack didn’t even move. Once they were finally stood up to, nobody had the moxie to act. My new friends kept looking at Carhartt, and then to me, expecting me to hit him for being so obnoxious. They might have heard me think, Why would I want to do that? It would be becoming the Beast. Carhartt muttered “Faggot,” and scratched his head as if he hadn’t done anything.
My new friends chuckled to themselves. The fight was over; everybody here knew the bully had no courage. The clock tower rang eleven loud bells. I pushed through with a polite “Excuse me,” and continued on to class. I heard my new friends’ footsteps behind me, like the rustling of leaves in the forest we were.
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